


And Fade to Black

by taranoire



Category: Fullmetal Alchemist, Fullmetal Alchemist (Anime 2003), Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood & Manga
Genre: Abuse, Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Domestic Violence, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-04-01
Updated: 2014-04-01
Packaged: 2018-01-17 19:04:46
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,047
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1399072
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/taranoire/pseuds/taranoire
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Roy's been acting weird lately.</p>
            </blockquote>





	And Fade to Black

**Author's Note:**

> Warnings: potentially triggering material, sexual abuse, intimidation. 
> 
> THIS IS NOT ROMANTIC. I wanted to write about Edward's unusually passive response to violence when it came from those he cared about in FMA1. He let himself be hit. In this scenario, that passiveness returns when it comes to Roy's alcoholism and controlling, possessive behavior. It's nothing especially graphic. Most of it was inspired by my own abuse.

Edward never had the benefit of a violence-insulated childhood. From the beginning it was tainted with blood and anger. His father lusted after a forgotten fruit and left his bruised mother on a kitchen floor, untouched but rotting all the same, her lungs full of pulp. His teacher painted her marks on him; beat him half-dead before coddling him to suffocation. She broke his arm in two places before he lost it to the Gate. And then there was Winry, of course, who didn't know the difference between a reprimand and a slap.

Even Alphonse—sweet, innocent Alphonse—lashed out. Shoved him, punched him, threw books at his head. Part of it was miscalculating the strength of his armored body (the boy was used to the force of a child's muscles). But part of it was miscalculating the strength of Edward's skin.

What's the difference, though, between bruises at the hands of those you love and cuts from enemy shrapnel?

"You're fucking impossible!" he screams, resisting the urge to stand on the balls of his feet, wishing more than ever that he was taller. Roy Mustang frightens him and sometimes all he has to bolster himself are his own screeching lungs. "I don't know how the fuck someone would even go about this kind of thing, I don't know anything about jurisdiction or hierarchy, any of that. I don't know, Roy!"

"Then how," Roy hisses, "did it end up in Patton's office with your goddamn signature? Do you think this is a game? Do you think I'm amused by your bullshit? You may as well have spit in my face and put his leash around your neck."

Edward shoves past him, needing to escape this before it gets any worse. Their arguments at work are one thing. There are other people there who watch them, linger, make sure no fist fights erupt. At home the volcanic clusterfuck has no referee. Technically they aren't even supposed to see each other outside of a military environment, can't touch fingertips, let alone share a bed, and in the intimate confines of a gated community and closed doors they're naked and vulnerable and tear each other apart like rabid wolves.

At times like this his head gets stuffed full of those little thoughts. Those little doubts. Like the fact that he's seventeen, Roy is thirty-one, so much older and so much darker and when it comes down to it maybe they don't have much in common beyond daddy issues and the occasional sweaty nightmare.

"Why are you walking away from me?" the man's voice echoes on the cavernous walls. The house has always been too big in a way that's claustrophobic, decorated with lace and shiny wood. It reminds Edward that he is a child and that one day Roy will share this house with a lady, not a sexually confused crippled kid. "You stupid fuck up, you're not worth my time. I've put my life and dignity on the line for you and this is how you repay me?"

Roy throws the documentation—with its thick grey envelope, blocky red print, and dense fluttery pages—against the wall where it flops to the floor like a dead, over-sized moth.

"I'm sorry but I really had nothing to do with this-!" Edward slams the bedroom door with a loud crack, his body solidifying into a corpse-like mass once the rush passes him over. All of this noise, all of this fighting. It's his day off and he's more breathless than he would be in a physical confrontation. He walks backwards, stumbling until his thighs hit the bed and he collapses onto it.

They made love here twelve hours ago.

He pulls his knees up to his chest and stares at the sliver of light beneath the door. He has maybe ten seconds of peace before it all goes to hell again, before Roy's rage catches up to his brain. Something hits the door loudly and Ed flinches, but it's probably just a shoe or a book. Roy threw a knife once, but the blade was dull from cutting homegrown tomatoes for stew.

Roy is like that. He is a perfectionist, a romanticist, has all of these grand ideas that he whispers sleepily in Edward's ear on moonlit nights. He makes him go starry-eyed; not because he would ordinarily like such things, but because Roy is painting the picture. The thing about idealistic fantasies is that when they don't come true, they drain the passion from the beholder and render him nothing more than a war vet who abuses more poisons than Ed can name.

("I'm somewhat passionate for fine wines," the decorated man says with a smirk as he uncorks a bottle of vintage 1870.

"No. You're a drunk.")

How did this all start? Like any other day. He woke up, kissed Roy good morning, warm and soft and god so lovely the way the man wraps his arms around him and murmurs sweet nothings in his hair like he's precious, like he's loved. And he is loved. He sees it whenever Roy looks at him sober. That longing, that smile that elevates them and brightens the color from pitch-black to deep mesmerizing blue.

He sees it in small affections—a warm cup of coffee with four cubes of sugar and no milk; a rare book on the bedside table he's never seen before; ironed shirts and polished boots; whispers of admiration in his ear when he discloses his ideas on alchemical theory.

Edward is due to leave for the East soon and wanted to finish some preliminary paperwork so he wouldn't have to do it on the train. But then. But then Roy got word that General Patton, some merely competent old man with more gold in his pocket than brains in his head, had been granted unfettered access to the Fullmetal Alchemist's files.

His family history, his school records, his emancipation authorization, his military background, writs of transit: every bit of documentation from his birth up to his last mission.

Edward remembers signing something for the general weeks ago, but it wasn't this and he has a damn good idea that his signature was fabricated somehow but it's his word against a member of the brass and his reputation isn't exactly spotless either (as Patton, obviously, is well aware of by now).

It frightens him. Paralyzes him. He didn't do anything wrong, didn't ask for this to happen, and because of one error in judgment a man he barely knows has violated his and his brother's privacy and probably Colonel Mustang's infamous "plans." He has no idea the depth of what's been put into jeopardy, and so some tiny voice sheltered in the back of his skull tells him that a little screaming is okay.

Roy opens the door and then slams it closed again, holding a bottle of whiskey by the neck as if it's a weapon he's planning to use against armed intruders. Edward gazes at his fingers, knowing them well. They're warm, soft, with smooth scars from old burns. Roy is wearing his gloves—the white gloves with the red thread.

"What are you going to do?" Edward challenges, staring him down. "You gonna throw that, too?"

Roy shakes his head in a slow, jerky movement. He seems unfocused, as if he isn't quite sure where he is or what his intentions are. And this is Roy Mustang. The man who always exudes a perpetual awareness of his minute surroundings. It's unnerving. "No."

"Then what are you going to do?"

"I'm going to think for a minute, if that's alright with you," Roy snaps. Edward's stunned silence satisfies him, and he wanders over to the bed, sitting down beside him and taking a heavy swig of his drink. Edward looks away. He feels small. He never feels this small. The alcohol sloshes and it smells foul and—and there's a reason he asks him not to kiss him when he drinks.

He swallows hard. A little thought: he's far too young to be in a situation like this. Though maybe age has nothing to do with it. Maybe this is an objectively bad situation. He wouldn't know. He's used to just shutting up and letting adults stew in their problems sometimes.

"Put it away," he mumbles.

Roy gives him an annoyed look.

Edward blinks angrily at him, then tries again, this time reaching for the heavy bottle. "Put it away, come on, give it to me…"

Roy—kisses him. But it's not a warm, affectionate press of the lips, nothing Edward is used to. Roy grabs the back of his head, fist tangled up in his hair, holds him so close there's no room to breathe or thrash and takes his mouth with teeth and tongue. Edward goes still. He's asked him…he's told him not to do this…

It seems like an eternity but Roy finally breaks away and nuzzles drunkenly against his cheek. "I'm sorry…I shouldn't have yelled at you…let me make it up to you, baby…"

Edward tries to shrink and push him off nicely at the same time, shaky and disoriented. "You're drunk. Get off of me…"

The bed is underneath his back now and his stomach twists up horribly with nausea, fear, rage. If this were anyone else. If they were anywhere else. He would kill him. Roy doesn't seem to notice he's shaking as he holds him down, presses wet kisses into his neck.

"Let me make love to you…"

His eyes sting. "Stop it…."

Roy grabs his resisting, wandering hands and holds them tight together, shoves his tongue down deep in his mouth and Edward tries to scream but the sound fades in an unsatisfying muffled way. He bites down and Roy lets go, finally lets go, abandons the attack on his mouth and allows him to shakily crawl to the other side of the bed.

What just happened.

What the fuck just happened.

"I…I…" Edward chokes on the lump in his throat and curls up against the headboard, holding his folded legs up against his chest. Roy is supposed to be different. Roy isn't supposed to grab him and touch him and god damn it he gets enough of that crap, the jokes in the canteen and the slow soft threat in his ear when guns aren't enough to put fear into him, the flippant show of dominance for no one.

Edward caught a glimpse of what he's capable of and he may have stopped and they may have fucked a hundred times before this but that gives him no right, his body is not under contract, it's not an object, it's not a possession Roy can stake claim to.

Roy won't look at him. "Don't you ever, ever disrespect me the way you have done today. I risk everything every time I let you get on that damn train, Ed, every time I touch you…and this…" He hangs his head and shakes. "This is not fair."

Edward is quiet for a long time. Then the words spill out, and he does not even attempt to stop himself. "I go to sleep to the sound of you breaking glass… To the sound of you falling into shit. You dumb fuck. You threaten to burn the house down, with me inside of it. Sometimes you scream at me and I feel like the world's stopped spinning, like I'm gonna be standing here staring at the floor and biting my lip until you kill us both."

Roy turns without a word, stands in the doorway before muttering that he'll be sleeping downstairs, leaves the room. Edward doesn't dare draw a single breath. His face stings and his eyes are heavy and he can't think beyond an iteration of what the fuck, what the fuck and inwardly inflicted loathing.

For a fraction of a second, he considers that he is unsafe. That he should call—someone. He picks up the phone and the dial tone is a comforting hum against his ear. He closes his eyes and freezes.

There is nothing to say.

He flushes with shame and disgust and convinces himself that he is being unreasonable.

He hangs up the phone and tries to fall asleep.


End file.
